Gentle Blog Reader,It's Tuesday and what does that mean?? "It's Red's Tamale Day!!!!" I only wish - since that would mean I was about twelve years old again (plus I really do like tamales)!! Nope, what this means is the kick-off of what I hope will be a nice tradition - we will share some of our own interpretations of Mary's illustrations on our dolls. "ME Too'sday" - As in "Tonner can do it - me too" (Not very elegant grammar, I do admit!)

And what better place to start than way back at the beginning for me. I made this outfit in late 2003 or early 2004, and it is the first one where I tried to follow an ME illustration.

Since that time I added Tonner's wonderful boots (from Michael's cowboy outfit, I believe) to my collection and they look much better than my early efforts to make boots! But I must admit, I am, to this day, intensely proud of these gloves! And I've tried and tried since then to make similarly well fitted gloves and never again succeed so well - it has to do with the type of fabric, I'm sure.

Here is Mary Engelbreit's illustration from 1991. I would assume that she was referring back to this drawing when she drew the cowgirl outfit for Georgia, the paper doll, at Halloween 1998. And Tonner then based his 2000 outfit on that paper doll.

I hope Mary and the Tonner design team all had as much fun with their creative process as I did with mine!

Enjoy, R.

Next up: What's in a name??

Andy

1/24/2012 06:28:53 am

I always love to see your interpretation of ME illustrations. Great job!

Michele Severino

1/25/2012 02:56:41 am

Hi, I came across your website while Googling my own name. I AM SO THRILLED to see what you did with my Dolls. You are right about the body on the vinyl dolls. Sadly, the company that produced them did a poor job with the molding. My porcelain prototypes had a much better fit. I absolutely love what you are doing with all the dolls, your scenes are amazing. You have so much talent. I look forward to seeing more.
Sincerely,
Michele Severino

Roberta

1/25/2012 03:10:21 am

This is so amazing to hear from you!!! I just love the sculpts on the three Forever Friendz dolls and it opened up a whole new world to me when I realized I could transfer the heads over to the Tonner dolls. (Sorry that I was so disparaging about the FF vinyl bodies!!) I've even put one of them on a J'aime Rosebay BJD body (you can see her on the third page of the Firefly photos). Please stay tuned for future blog posts because the FF girls (here they are Kylie, Sudha and Liat) are always active. Sudha especially works a lot with my Annie Laurie - they both have a "scientific" bent and are impatiently awaiting delivery of a microscope to use in their next project. (Sudha is named after a childhood friend of mine.) Thanks again - you've made my day!!! Roberta